From high skill migration to cosmopolitan service class? Irish migration policy in a European context

Abstract

European countries are increasingly trying to develop policies to attract skilled migrants even as they are trying to restrict the entry of unskilled labour. Skilled migrants are increasingly diverse in terms of who they are, how they move and why they move. Rather than discussing skilled migration it may be more relevant to discuss the growing cosmopolitanism of the service class. Crucially for policy-makers, there is growing evidence that issues of culture and lifestyle are increasingly important for these people. Against this background the second part of the paper examines the European situation in more detail. The `service class? ? the professionals and managers ? has become more `cosmopolitan? (in the simple sense that they are likely to be born outside the country where they currently work). The UK and Ireland appear to be the most extreme cases of this development. The third part of the paper examines the specific case of Ireland. It shows the importance of skilled labour immigration during the ? now ended ? Irish economic boom, but also shows how mobility across Ireland is perhaps a better description of what happened. The final section of the paper turns to questions of policy. A typology of policy measures is proposed, differentiating between both between `hard? and `soft? policy measures and between `focused? and `contextual? measures. It is argued that contextual policies ? those that are not explicitly targeted at migrants ? are increasingly important. Furthermore, soft and focused policy can be especially important for skilled immigrants.